There’s an old trick with Brothers. They say the ink is low when it’s still half full. You stick a bit of tape over the sensor. All is well.
Yeah - a lot of the comments at Amazon concur. One suggestion also involved something with a sensor wheel (or something), some kind of part that you’d get if you got a refill kit and refilled the cartridges yourself.
We also have a Canon MP560 printer as the sole printing device in the Sevenwood household. I love it for what we use it for (just printing), but I have to agree that its user interface is awful.
I still remember the occasion when I installed a new home router and gave it a nice, long wireless password - and then tried to enter that passpword into the Canon printer. Press right-side-button to get to the next character, press top-side-button 26 times to get through the capitalized letters then another xx times to get to the right lower-case letter, then press right-side -button to move to the next character, …
We bought an HP 6500 and it has been nothing but problems, it’s probably not even 1.5 years old and already I just wait until I get to the office to print something, it is a paperweight. I’ll never buy another HP product again.
Make sure to check whether you can use cheap ink or not.
I have two Canon printers: the first one I bought(to replace an Epson that died prematurely due to the inkjet head(?) puking out that was not replaceable!!) I realized only ink that would work with it were original Canon ink cartridges, and so I bought another one that I could throw in any refilled jobber cartridges. I still use the second one. The first fancier one I bought just sits there collect dust.